Today was an interesting day to say the least. I'm sure you all have seen or heard about the bad storms that have been crossing the U.S.

http://www.wral.com/weather/story/9451835/


My boyfriend and I have been on the house hunt for a few months now and the city we're looking in was hit hard by a tornado today. This morning we went to Sanford to look at some homes with our realtor and we knew the storms were coming this afternoon. We headed back to Pittsboro where we live which is about 12 miles north of Sanford. We were hesitant to come home this afternoon because we currently live in a modular home. We decided to grab some lunch and then head to Lowes to get a few things. I thought that going to Lowes would be a good place to kill some time and let the storm pass.

Around 3pm the Lowes people came on the speaker and said for everyone to get to the middle of the store. I sent a text to my siblings and my Mom to let them know where we were and what was going on, just in case. Everyone congregated there for about 20 minutes and they came over the speaker to say that the tornado warning had expired and we were good to go.

A few minutes later I got a phone call from my Sister who said that the Lowes in Sanford had gotten leveled by a tornado. She thought that we were at that particular Lowes since that's typically the store we go to.

We left Lowes and came home to check on our house and things were fine. My boyfriend was trying to get in touch with his boss and co-workers in Sanford and he couldn't get anyone to answer. We left Pittsboro and went back to Sanford to see if they were ok since their building is near the Lowes. Roads were blocked off in every direction and we had a terrible time trying to get to his work. We finally made it and the building right next door had been leveled. It missed his work by a few yards.

The city of Sanford is in disaster mode. All types of government agencies are there, along with the Red Cross, the city is imposing a curfew and there are mixed reports of fatalities.

I have never been so scared. Being from the eastern side of Virginia, I'm use to hurricanes and not tornadoes. I would take a hurricane ANY DAY over a tornado...bc at least you have warning of it coming. I am thankful that we are all ok but it is still very very scary. Just the thoughts of "what if"....I could not imagine what it would've been like had a tornado come through the store we were in.

After going through this today, I will NEVER again doubt that God puts people right where they are suppose to be. It is clear to me that He put us where we were suppose to be today. I just pray that those who were directly effected by this will be ok.


This is a picture of the building thats right next door to my boyfriends work. It's destroyed.

Tornado warnings seem to be common for those that live in tornado alley. Most of them nothing happens. Because of that, people get complacent. Trust me, they don't put them out on a whim. I was a weather specialist in the Air Force for 6 years. Glad you're ok and I hope your boyfriend's coworkers are safe.

edit:
story, pics and radar at http://fwix.com/raleigh/sha..._area_damage_serious

http://www.wunderground.com/US/NC/Sanford.html

[This message has been edited by Gokart Mozart (edited 04-16-2011).]

quote Originally posted by sarabear: This is a picture of the building thats right next door to my boyfriends work. It's destroyed.

THAT is just a "building"? With the amount of debris, it looks like a 20 story office building.

[This message has been edited by IMSA GT (edited 04-16-2011).]

Those storms have just roared through our area. A tornado struck in Gloucester which is Northwest of where I'm at. Nothing as bad here. Just power outages, and lots of wind and rain. Everybody stay safe.

Jim

quote Originally posted by jimbolaya: Those storms have just roared through our area. A tornado struck in Gloucester which is Northwest of where I'm at. Nothing as bad here. Just power outages, and lots of wind and rain. Everybody stay safe. Jim

I spoke to my Dad in Williamsburg (where I'm from) a little while ago and he said that it was pretty bad for a short time but it had started to clear up. Glad that Virginia Beach isn't getting the terrible stuff, I have some family/friends there.

Glad this system is gone. It's done more than enough damage across our country!

quote Originally posted by sarabear: I spoke to my Dad in Williamsburg (where I'm from) a little while ago and he said that it was pretty bad for a short time but it had started to clear up. Glad that Virginia Beach isn't getting the terrible stuff, I have some family/friends there. Glad this system is gone. It's done more than enough damage across our country!

Woke up this morning to the news, that in fact a tornado touched down in Gloucester county. 3 are confirmed dead! Watching the view from chopper 10, and you can clearly see the path of the tornado. It went through the middle of a church, leaving the front and the back standing, but removing the steeple, and destroying the middle. Totally cremated another house, and capsized boats. The odd thing is, there was another house that it picked up off it's foundation and placed it twenty feet away, without otherwise, no more than a scratch. That house was only about 100 yards behind the one that totally got flattened.

Jim

When i was younger we had one come thru our neighborhood. I was at school that day ( college ) in another town about an hour away and didnt know it happened until i got close to home and saw all the houses gone and people wandering in the street.

Thankfully the tornado hit a creek bed and went around our house at the last possible moment ( you could see it was heading that way for miles.. the house would have been gone. ), but a lot of people were not so lucky. No one was killed in our area, but the tornado went north east towards Ohio and did kill a couple of people on its way.

My dog was out back when it happened, scared the pee out of him. His house exploded in front of him and was gone. Good thing he wasn't hurt from the debris. Our cat, he went missing for almost 3 weeks before he made it back home a smelly, filthy, matted and scared mess. God only knows where he ended up. He never left the house again.

Some 25 years later you can still see signs of it if you know where to look, or know which 'lots' used to be peoples homes.

Glad you are all ok.

[This message has been edited by Nurb432 (edited 04-17-2011).]

Is scarey if your not used to it. I lived in Oklahoma City and Tulsa years ago. We used to sit out on the patio under the awning to watch for them. Many times you see them in the air that never touch down. We only ran and hid when we saw or heard one. A few years ago they had one of the biggest ones on record that practically leveled the southern suburb of Midwest City. Oddly enough it only missed the Norman National Center for Severe Weather by a few miles.

I remember when I was young living in Colorado watching funnel clouds form in the sky. Yeah tornadoes can be scary. Our house had a little 8' x 8' concrete room that was about 5' high for a tornado shelter.

Just a FYI, if you are ever in a disaster inside of a structure or building, the safest place to be is laying next to something big and bulky. If the roof collapses then the bulky item will prevent it from crushing you.

Do not lay under anything. You want it to get crushed before you get crushed. If you are under it, you get crushed with it. During the 89 Loma Prieta quake when the Nimitz Freeway structure collapsed, there was at least 3 ft of room between the upper and lower decks. The crushed vehicles held the upper deck up. But every single person on the lower deck, 42 total, was dead because they were still in their cars. If any one them got out an laid next to their vehicle, they would still be alive.

I guess you never know how lucky you are sometimes.
When I was younger I was taking a friend of mine to his family`s hardware store to drop him off at the front door.
I had to stop by the bank first which was about a block from the store and while we were sitting in the drive-through which was basically surrounded by brick buildings we saw all of this debris flying up over the buildings.
When we drove up to the storefront the whole thing was collapsed inward and you could see the path the tornado had taken right down the street.
Everybody was fine, even though it had dropped the whole AC rooftop unit right on top of a guy`s car that was sitting in the back.
If we had bypassed the bank we would have been sitting right at the front door when the tornado hit.
It left a very small footprint but it was plenty powerful.